City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

by Walter Jon Williams

  “If we work together,” Aiah says. “If we all know what we are doing....”

  “You will not know what you are doing.” Rohder brushes cigaret ash from his shirtfront. “And I am far too old for this sort of thing,” he adds. “The last time I coped with a plasm emergency— the Bursary Street flamer, you remember, back in Jaspeer— I ended up in the hospital. I cannot expose my neurons to plasm of that strength, not any longer.”

  “Well. I understand. If it’s a matter of your health....”

  “No, it’s not,” says Rohder sharply. “Haven’t you been listening? It is not simply unhealthy— it is dangerous, it’s illegal, and....” He leans forward, a kind of cold anger in his blue eyes. “And this creature has a measure of political protection, does he not?”

  Aiah finds herself paralyzed for a moment beneath the certainty of those watery eyes, beneath the intelligence that had just unraveled the secret she had been trying so desperately to preserve with lies she had thought so cunning.

  “Yes,” she finally says. “But it’s unwilling protection. The person doesn’t want—”

  Rohder nods thoughtfully to himself. “I knew when I read Constantine’s article: It was too outside his usual sphere... far too assured.” He nods as if confirming something to himself. “He found a use for the thing, then. I’d wondered how so many of the Keremaths had died, in the first minutes of the coup, in such a well-shielded building.”

  “It’s haunting him,” Aiah says. “It can destroy everything he’s built. We’ve got to get rid of it.”

  Rohder takes a meditative draw on his cigaret. “Then why is Constantine not leading the charge?” he says. “Why isn’t he putting a group of mages together— he can find more suitable ones than you can, I’m sure. Why isn’t Constantine solving his own problem?”

  “He can’t. He’s too caught up in it. And—” There is an ache in her throat, because she doesn’t want to admit this of him, not this kind of weakness. It’s not, after all, a flaw of greatness; not a crime of excess, like those she’s got used to, a desire for women, or an uncontrollable appetite for conspiracy. A baffling subtlety of policy.

  “Constantine is afraid of the thing,” she admits. “He’s known it for years, and—”

  “If he’s afraid of it,” reasonably, “then perhaps it is with good reason. Perhaps you should be as afraid as he.”

  “The secret is very near to being revealed,” Aiah insists. “There is no one who can follow Constantine, no one capable of continuing his work. If he is linked with this creature, he falls, and all our work, yours and mine, goes for nothing. I haven’t given my life to Caraqui to have it wrecked by something like this.”

  Rohder leans back and considers. A spasm, amusement perhaps, crosses his features. “You want to keep your job,” he says. “That is a reason I can respect.”

  “That is not what I mean!” Frustration and anger fire her words into the air like bullets. “It’s not just me, it’s the tens of thousands who died, all the people who lost their homes.... All they’ve got left is hope, and I can’t let them lose that, too, not when I could have helped....” Her nails bite the metal of the chair arm, leave silver scars in the gray paint.

  Rohder regards the matter, nods. “I will offer what advice I can, though I will not confront this thing directly, nor will I play a part in your actual operation.”

  Aiah feels her frustration abate somewhat. “Thank you,” she says.

  “And in regard to our jobs, our official jobs,” reaching for a file, “I have another report from the Havilak’s Transformation team. They have found another altered office building, the Communications and Telephony Center down on Orange Canal.”

  “Altered.” The shift in subject matter bewilders her for a moment. “Oh— you mean—”

  “Another building, which we’d scheduled for internal reshaping along the lines of fractionate interval theory, was found to have been altered before we could get there. A complete job this time, not half-finished like the first.”

  The Dreaming Sisters, Aiah thinks, a burst of revelation. It’s the sisters who are altering these buildings, giving themselves the plasm for those huge displays. They must have discovered FIT long ago, kept it to themselves, along with their theories of life extension and plasm use....

  “As before,” Rohder continues, “the meters have shown the increase, which occurred gradually about a month ago, and there is no evidence that any plasm was stolen.”

  They only used the plasm for a brief display, Aiah thinks. Afterward they let it flow into the public supply.

  Perhaps she will confront them with this knowledge at some time, or through this matter of Taikoen earn their trust so that they will share their secrets with her.

  “If there was no plasm stolen,” Aiah says, “then it’s not the business of our department.”

  “I find it difficult to believe,” Rohder says, “in these omnibenevolent mages who creep about in secret to improve the structure of our public buildings. I would like to know what they’re after.”

  “Maybe you’ll meet them someday.”

  He narrows his eyes, suspicious of her sudden gaiety.

  “Maybe,” he says.

  CONSTANTINE PROMISES “HOUSING OUT OF THIN AIR”

  PLANS NEAR COMPLETION

  Alfeg’s office is filled with Barkazil memorabilia: old Holy League recruiting posters, a frame chromo of the Coffee Factory before the war, pictures of long-dead politicians, and, in a wetsilver frame, the same cheap portrait of Karlo that hangs in Aiah’s flat.

  The metal door is locked from the inside. Aiah sits on the desk, Khorsa and Alfeg are in chairs, and Dr. Romus is coiled on the floor. Refiq is back in his apartment, with booze, pills, and a girl he picked up, and will probably be there for a while.

  “Destroying the hanged man,” Aiah tells them, “will mean destroying Refiq’s body along with it. Refiq is already dead, but we can’t prove it, and it won’t look that way to an observer. It will look like a violation of the victim’s rights. Even under martial law we’ve had to obtain warrants for our arrests, we’ve presented evidence to military judges, and the sentences passed have been legal under martial-law decree. If we destroy the hanged man, we will be acting in violation of law.”

  She looks at the solemn faces of Khorsa, Alfeg, and Dr. Romus. “That’s why I’ve spoken only to you three. Whatever we do here, I want absolute secrecy in this matter, and I want you to understand that this mission will not take place officially, that there will be no files, no casework, no commendations. It’s a job that needs to be done in complete secrecy, so complete that no one else can ever be told.”

  Khorsa sits below a framed blowup of the cover of Corona, Aiah smiling from the balcony of the Falcon Tower, her skin tones subtly tinged with gold. Khorsa tilts her head in thought. “This is where the Party Sickness comes from, isn’t it?” she says.

  “Yes. It’s the hanged man trying to get the most out of his stolen body before it dies. The Party Sickness is always fatal, remember.”

  “Ethemark is forming a task group on the Party Sickness. Does he know about this?”

  Aiah looks at her. “No. Ethemark is a talented mage and administrator, but he is a political appointee with his own agenda. I do not wish to bring him into this, because there are political implications which I do not wish to see any party in Caraqui attempt to exploit.”

  Alfeg seems surprised. “How is this a political issue?”

  Aiah looks at him and unloads the half-truth she has ready. Risky, because she knows that Romus already knows more than she plans to tell the rest of the team.

  “I have detected the hanged man in the Palace,” she says. Alfeg and Khorsa stare up at her with horror in their eyes.

  “I don’t believe anyone in the Palace has suffered from the Party Sickness,” Aiah continues, “but everyone here is vulnerable not only to having our bodies possessed by this creature, but to physical attack as well.”

  Alfeg stammers out
a question. “Shouldn’t you tell— I don’t know— the army? The president? Someone?”

  Aiah looks at him. “How do I know this isn’t the army’s creature? Or the ally of someone in the Palace? Or maybe spying on behalf of one of our own government departments?” She looks at them each in turn.

  “Force of the Interior,” Khorsa murmurs.

  Aiah gives Khorsa a look as if to say yes. Aiah has no objection to their all believing the hanged man is something of Sorya’s.

  “We keep the existence of this thing entirely in this room,” Aiah emphasizes, “and we tell no one.”

  “Not even—?” Khorsa ventures to suggest.

  “No one,” Aiah says. Khorsa looks uncertain. “Who is the creature likely to be spying on, if it’s here to spy?” Aiah asks. “Exactly the person you’re thinking of, most likely. And we don’t know for certain how many of these creatures there are.” She shakes her head. “The matter stays here. And we handle it ourselves, and with the help of some others we can trust.”

  Change the subject now, she thinks, before they have a chance to work up objections. She turns to Alfeg. “We’re going to try to lure Refiq to a place we can control, and then finish him off.”

  “Just the four of us?” Khorsa asks.

  “No.” A demonic little grin tweaks the corners of Aiah’s mouth. “No. We are going to be assisted by two hundred and fifty-six other mages.”

  POLAR LEAGUE FREEZES FUNDS, DEMANDS DEMOBILIZATION

  “Hanged man, eh?” Aratha says. She puts down her coffee mug. “I may have material on how to fight creatures of the sort— mind if I check something?”

  Aiah looks at her in wonder. “Please do.”

  Mage-Major Aratha is a solid woman, broad-shouldered and powerful, with deep cinnamon skin and surprising green eyes. Aiah had flown to Lanbola to meet her in her small apartment, before normal work hours, and found her in the middle of breakfast.

  Aiah, who has not eaten for the last twenty-four hours, is finding the look and scent of Aratha’s toasted muffin very inviting.

  Aratha steps into the living alcove, unstraps a military-looking trunk of battered gray metal, and opens the lid. She pulls out a series of plastic-bound volumes, finds the one she is looking for, and returns the others to the trunk. “Phantasm and Plasm Emanation Manual,” she says as she returns to the table. Aiah’s mouth quietly waters as Aratha bites into her muffin while leafing through the index.

  “Does the military encounter hanged men often?” Aiah asks.

  Aratha chews with gusto, shakes her head in answer, then swallows. “I don’t know anyone who has,” she says, “but since we encounter a lot of odd things in the course of our duty, we’re supposed to be prepared for anything. There’s usually a procedure for encountering anything you can imagine. See also vampires,” reading, narrowing her eyes. “I haven’t reviewed this since my academy days, so please forgive my poor memory.”

  She flips pages and reads quietly while eating. When she is done, she puts down the book and looks up at Aiah. “You’ve got yourself a problem, all right. You couldn’t pick anything simple, like a flamer or an incarnate demon sword or anything, it had to be a hanged man.”

  “The hanged man,” Aiah says, “picked Caraqui.”

  “The biggest problem is going to be finding it— configuring your sensorium to detect not just plasm, but a modulation in plasm, which is what this thing is, according to what I read here. And if you can’t see it, you can’t confine it. Fortunately the manual has some ideas.”

  “We’re going to lure it into an isolated plasm well, then use up the plasm. The creature will die when the plasm runs out.”

  “The manual says that’s possible, but you want to know it’s in the plasm well.”

  “I’d like to see the manual, if I may.”

  Aratha shoves it across the table to her. Aiah looks with dismay at columns of fine print, a bewildering amount of jargon, and a large dose of acronyms. Configuration of the PMDS should be completed before arrival at the ASoO, she reads.

  “You’re going to do this today?” Aratha says. “I’ll get a team together— two of my mages, people who survived the war, which means they’re both good and used to practically everything. And myself, of course.”

  Aiah looks at her in surprise. She had not yet asked Aratha for anything.

  Aratha sees her look, misunderstands it.

  “You won’t be wanting us?” she says.

  “I will. I’m relieved that you’re so willing.”

  “Oh.” Aratha shrugs. “You’re our Ministerial Assistant for Barkazil Liaison, after all. We’re under your orders.”

  “This whole operation may be illegal. I can’t give you an order for it.”

  Another shrug. “Verbal order will do. Then you class the whole operation as secret and no one will think about it ever again.” She gives Aiah a reassuring look. “Don’t worry. You have no idea how often this sort of thing comes up in wartime. I’ll pick trustworthy people.”

  Aratha’s war, Aiah thinks, was probably very bad, all madness and terror and reflex. Practically all a military mage did involved the deliberate murder of the enemy, or alternatively, frantic attempts to keep her own people or herself from being killed. But Aratha had survived it, and survival had given her a kind of serene, uncomplicated confidence— she felt she could view anything, deal with anything, engage with any kind of enemy, and on short notice.

  Aiah’s war, probably less perilous, had left her feeling isolated, with only the Adrenaline Monster for company. But then Aratha had all the other officers to support her, the entire military culture. Aiah had little support in her life, only crushing responsibilities that did not permit her any weakness.

  “Thank you,” Aiah says simply.

  “It will do us good,” Aratha judges, “to get away from routine for a while.”

  NECESSITY IS THE WATCHWORD OF THE GODS.

  A THOUGHT-MESSAGE FROM HIS PERFECTION,

  THE PROPHET OF AJAS

  “Refiq?” Alfeg says. “This is Ducat. I wanted to remind you about the party. Third shift today, 21:00.”

  He holds the heavy plastic headset to his ears as he listens, looks up at Aiah, mouths the words, “He’s drunk.”

  “Everything’s laid on,” Alfeg says, when he gets a chance to speak. “The best liquor, the best pills, entertainment, and more girls than you can imagine. Do you have the address?”

  Alfeg waits again, presumably for Refiq to find something to write with, then says, “100 Cold Canal. It’s a really strange building, all carved stone, off the Seahorse Waterway. Do you need directions, or will you just take a water taxi?”

  Sweat is gleaming on his forehead by the time Alfeg finishes the call. “He believed me, I think.” He looks up at Aiah. “He— it— doesn’t have Refiq’s memories, right? He doesn’t know that Dulat is just someone we made up?”

  “Refiq’s gone,” Aiah assures him. “There’s only that thing in there.”

  Alfeg wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. “I was terrified,” he says, “just knowing what was on the other end of the line.”

  “If he was drunk,” Khorsa says, “do you think he’ll remember about the party?”

  “We’ll have someone call later and remind him,” Aiah says. “Melko.”

  She looks up at Melko, one of the two mages that Aratha has brought with her from Lanbola. He is tall, gangly, and wears black plastic-rimmed glasses tied around his ears with loops of elastic. He looks far too young to be the captain his collar tabs proclaim him to be.

  Aratha’s other mage looks too young to be anywhere but in school. A silent, spotty girl, painfully thin, Kari sits atop a file cabinet with her legs drawn up and plays nervously with the dangling geomantic charms on her bracelet.

  Combat mages tend to be young, Aiah has discovered. The young have a sense of invulnerability that is useful in that line of work.

  “In the meantime,” Aiah says, “Khorsa needs to continue our surveil
lance to make sure Refiq doesn’t get away. I have reserved the small Operations Room for all third shift today and first shift tomorrow. And—”

  There’s a knock on the door. Aiah goes to the door, unlocks it, cracks it open, and sees her receptionist, Anstine.

  “The president’s on the phone for you,” he says. “I told him I’d see if you’re available.”

  “I suppose I must be,” Aiah decides.

  She walks to her office, where she picks up the delicate headset and places it over her ears.

  “Yes?” she says.

  Constantine’s deep voice rumbles in her ears. “Did you get the flowers?”

  Aiah is suddenly weary. She folds into her chair. “You know I did.”

  “And did you read the note?”

  “No. I haven’t had the time.”

  There is a moment’s awkward silence, then, “What’s so urgent? I thought you were taking these days off?”

  “An investigation coming to a head. I won’t bore you with detail.” She’s too weary to make them up anyway.

  “The note,” Constantine says, “contained, I thought, a very well-phrased apology, eloquent yet humble, a model of its kind.”

  “I’ll read it,” Aiah says, “when I have the time to appreciate such a piece of art.”

  “I hope you will take its sentiments to heart.”

  “I hope,” Aiah says, “that I may be able to.”

  There is another moment’s pause, and then Constantine says, “Sorya is going to Charna. Tomorrow. I am dining with her late third shift to say good-bye. These things must be done properly— farewells gracefully said, closures correctly made.”

  Aiah pictures the ransacking of files that must be going on in Sorya’s department now, information plundered to be carried off to Charna, or destroyed to keep from the hands of her successor. And then, she thinks, the gracious dinner in Constantine’s apartment while minions stuff secret after secret into Sorya’s trunks.